The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Dr Martha Deiros Collado on why good parenting starts with you

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

In this Friday episode of The Therapy Edit Anna chats to dream guest, Dr Martha Deiros Collado about her One Thing; on why good parenting starts with you.Dr Martha Deiros Collado, is a clinical psychologist and HCPC registered practitioner with over 20years of clinical and academic experience. She is also a mother of two, a yogi, a runner, andadventure sports enthusiast.What's more Dr Martha is now a published author! Her brand new book, How To Be The Grown Up. Why Good Parenting Starts with You is out now!With a Doctorate from UCL and training in Family Therapy from the Tavistock, Martha is a publishedauthor in peer reviewed papers and an experienced supervisor for qualified and traineepsychologists. She is a chartered member of the British Psychological Society and theCommunications Rep for the National Paediatric Psychology Network.Martha’s expertise is in parenting, child development, and paediatric health. Fluent in English,Spanish and French, a result of her international upbringing, she has a deep interest in how culture,language, and identity (race, sexuality, gender) intersect and influence our view of the world. Shespecialises in helping children and their parents cope with distress by taking a holistic systemsapproach that values the individual, their family, and the networks around them.You can find out more about Dr Martha here and of course you can follow her amazing Instagram account for tips and advice.We hope you love the listen and find comfort in this episode.

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist's mum of three and author Anna Martha. Every Friday, I invite one guest to tell me the one thing they would most like to share with mums everywhere. So join with me as we hear this dose of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's guest episode of The Therapy Edit. it. I have with me today at Dr. Marta Dieroz Colliado. She is a clinical psychologist and a HCPC registered practitioner with over 20 years of clinical and academic experience. We will know her on Instagram as the most amazingly encouraging, articulate, compassionate, clear provider of all these

little light bulb moments and tools that help us parent. And I'm so grateful. for her. I love scrolling past her videos. I'm grateful for all of the stuff that she's so generously puts out into the world, just helping us parent our little humans. She is also a mother of two, a yogi, a runner, and an adventure sports enthusiast. I know how many hours you've got in your day, but that is incredible. Her expertise in parenting, child development and pediatric health are just so valued in lots of different areas, and she specializes in helping children and their parents cope with distress by taking a holistic systems approach that values the individual, their family and the networks around them. And we know her, well, I know her from her Instagram,

but she does have a really growing Instagram community that has come to trust the calm and empathetic way that she tackles big subjects. And this is it. I think sometimes you can feel really fearful of some topics coming up thinking, how am I going to talk about death, how am I going to talk about war? How am I going to talk about consent and gender and sex? And that's the skill that she has in guiding us to empowering us to have these conversations with our children. But she also talks loads about the small but very critical day-to-day challenges such as getting children to eat their vegetables and brush their teeth. And all of this has come together in her brand new book, which as we record is out in a week. And I've just shown her on Amazon how

It is topping the charts and people are really excited to get their hands on it. And it's called How to Be the Grown Out, Why Good Parenting Starts with You. And it is hailed as the must-have toolkit for any parents. So go and pre-order that or order that. I think it will be out, newly out by the time this podcast is released. So now I will say hello after that, mammoth bio. How are you? I don't recognize that person you were talking about.

But hello. I mean, there was so much more to say about you and all your amazing experience. But how are you feeling with a book? I think I've got mixed feelings about it. I mean, I feel pretty scared is probably the main emotion. And I'm trying to reframe that as nervous excitement about the fact that it's going to be out into the world and people are going to actually read it.

But I think as a clinical psychologist, I never thought I'd write a book. It wasn't really something that I had in my mind that I would do. And I feel like it's quite exposing. like it's quite a vulnerable thing to do to put yourself in writing out there. And I know you've done that lots of times very successfully, Anna, but as a newbie writer, I find it absolutely terrifying. Well, you know, I have loved diving into your book and feel very privileged to have provided some kind words to go, which are just, yeah, just so grateful for the resource that is

your book and it's just so grounded and it is I think it's a guide and I think sometimes as parents we just literally I find myself thinking what do what do I do in this situation what do I actually do no we weren't trained for this and each age and stage brings new challenges and new questions so I think your book's just going to be a real a real comfort really affirming really guiding and done so warmly so it's brilliant it's brilliant and you can have lots of people saying that. So I'm excited for you. I really hope so. I want it to be like a reassuring companion to people. I do try and offer tool kits and strategies, but I also hopefully try and offer kind of non-judgmental experience and share some like illustrations of what the strategies

look like in a really imperfect way because I don't think there is a right way of parenting your child. There are things that we know are effective. And I think Some of those I would like them to become kind of common knowledge because I get asked questions that I think shouldn't be asked anymore. Things like, you know, if I keep holding my baby, am I going to spoil them? You know, like really simple things that I think in our society, we should have that as general knowledge that actually it helps grows a baby's brain. Like it helps their development. It offers them that secure attachment. There is nothing wrong with holding a baby or, you know, soothing them when they cry.

and lots of those things to me are really basic, but I feel like our society isn't very good at knowing them or like believing them. So I hope that's what I offer in my book, but it feels quite basic to me, but hopefully useful to people. But I think sometimes that's what we need is we need to feel affirmed in what we already feel is right in our gut, because there are so many and I think we're so over, we over consume and we are over, yeah, just often that gut instinct is just overridden by all this information and conflicting information that we're often engaging in. So to have it all on paper in black and white in a way that just maybe tell, affirms what you already feel is right. Sometimes it's really, really powerful. So, yeah, I'm excited for you.

I unfortunately don't have the nerves that you have because it's not my book, but I know, I know how brilliant it is. I can't wait to see it out in the world. So the question that we ask everyone here is if you could share one thing with all the parents, with all your knowledge and experience, what would that one thing be? I think my one thing would be that as a parent, your most powerful tool is you. It's the relationship that you're creating with your child that has the greatest power and the greatest influence in helping you parent them and to. teaching them the skills you want them to teach. And I often get asked, you know, like about strategies, you know, very specific questions about things like, you know, eating vegetables or whatever

it is, sleep or behaviour or whatever. But at the end of the day, for me, the most powerful thing is how you're relating to your child. Like the little, tiny little things, they're so mundane, but they're those little, sometimes feel, intangible things that we do with our children every single day that builds a relationship. And in a way, it's no different to kind of building a relationship with a friend. It's about, you know, that kind of to and fro, that back and forth that we have with them,

the way that we position ourselves with our children, the way that we talk to them, our tone of voice, the kind of quality in the communication that we offer them, how we use our bodies, whether they're soft and warm and comfortable, or whether they get harsh and tense and tight, like all those things.

build a relationship with our children that then carries them through the challenges. And even when we don't get the kind of strategies right, you know, you say the wrong thing or, oh, you didn't do it quite right, like how you read on Instagram or even how you read it in my book, if your relationship is good with your child, it doesn't matter. All that stuff just kind of falls away. And what you have left is you and them, which hopefully isn't just for your child. their childhood, it's forever. Because I think something I want to always hold in my mind is that I'm a parent now forever with my two daughters. I'm going to be hopefully their mom for life.

And so to me that it's really important that when they're in their 30s, hopefully their 40s and I'm still around, that I am still seen as their mother in the way that they see me now and that our relationship will grow and evolve, but that they'll still want to be with me, spend time, with me, you know, call me for a chat. Just call me for a chat, you know, not because something big's happened, something bad's happened. Just, hey, what are you up to? I'm hoovering. You know, like, just mundane chit-chat. Like, send me a voice note, like I send my friends. And that's what I want, like this long-lasting relationship. And I think if we as parents remind ourselves that that's the key, then sometimes, not all the time, but maybe most of

the time, what it will do is help us respond to our children in a slightly different way because we're coming from a place of, I want to have a positive relationship with you. So even when we get it wrong, we repair, for example. Just that little act can make such a big difference to our relationship. The same way that if we mess up with a friend, we might call them up in two days' time and say, hey, I'm really sorry. I know I said something and it upset you. Just that will be enough to maintain a relationship, right? So I think that's my one thing about the most powerful tool that you have is really you. And when you are able to focus more on you rather than controlling your child, you might see something shift. That's so interesting. I think we put so much pressure

on ourselves often to get it right, say the right thing. And I think not just in parenting, but in so many aspects of life and we can really critique that. But I think you're right. We get, if we think back to other relationships in our lives that maybe go a bit awry or we have, you know, misunderstanding or something, if you know that person well and you feel safe ultimately with that person, you know they're for you, you know that you matter to them, you know that they're human, we all get stuff wrong at points, but it's that foundational knowledge that they care about me, I care about them.

That's more important and bigger than anything. that may have happened in a tense or stressful moment. And I think we know that when it comes to friendships and relationships generally. But I think you're so right. Often with our kids, we put so much pressure on ourselves to get it right and maybe don't acknowledge the importance and the fundamental foundation that that relationship offers. Yeah. Because it's not, I mean, your kids, genuinely, I've worked with so many children. They don't look at you as a parent and think, you're not getting it right. Children tend to look at their parents with adoration.

They adore you. No matter what you do, even if you're getting it wrong every day, they adore you. You are their centre, especially little ones. Obviously, as they get older, teenagers, they have a different centre, which tend to be their friends. But if you're building this from the get-go, you need to remember that your child is adoring you.

And therefore, if you prioritize the relationship, you have with them more than the strategies, then what will happen is even when they're teenagers and they are going to spend more time with their friends, they're going to come back. Like, they're going to come back to you because they want to, not because they have to, but because they're like, I like spending time with my mum with my dad.

You know, I enjoy just sitting together. I enjoy chatting to them about what I did with my friends. Like, I often speak to adults who say they didn't have that. they didn't have parents who felt safe or secure. You know, they didn't have a parent that they could ask big topics to big questions that maybe were taboo in their home. And they learned that it was taboo because their parents didn't talk about it. So then they didn't feel able to broach it.

But that doesn't protect children. It doesn't do anything positive because they then aren't equipped to kind of know what to do when big things happen to them. And they also don't have that safe person. to go to. So if all their knowledge comes from their friends, their friends are going to have all sorts of information, good stuff, bad stuff, you know, wrong stuff. But if it's you that they rely on because they trust in that relationship with you, then you're going to be able to keep them safe and secure even when they're not by your side, even when they're all grown up,

because they know I can trust in you, I'm not afraid of you, you're not going to judge me. You know, same as with a really good friend, because that's often the relationship we have with a best friend. Most of us are adults who have best friends. They're people who don't judge us. They, we trust them. We know they're not going to mock us. They're not going to harm us. And that's the kind of, you shouldn't be your best friend to your child, but the qualities should be there. Those qualities of trust and safety should be there. And I think also as you speak, I'm thinking about, I'm just thinking about other relationships and the expectations that we place on those and how often it's so different the pressure that we put ourselves under with our kids.

I think with my husband, when I feel, when we feel connected, we tend to be more compassionate to one another, more patient with one another, more quick to repair and take that time to repair if there has been a misunderstanding or an upset. And I think, yeah, it's the same with our kids. If the focus is on that relationship, some of those are the things, the strategies, the tools, are going to feel easier to access because that foundation, you know, that connection is there. Yes. Absolutely. At the forefront. Yeah.

Yeah. But also, it's also easier for you when you mess up, not to feel so guilty about it. Because when you have a really positive relationship with somebody, when you mess up, you repair more quickly. You return back to that place. Exactly. And you return back to that good place with your child. child, but also with yourself, because you're able to take stock of all the goodness that's already there in that relationship with your child. So you can go, I messed up, but I'm human. And that's

okay. I can let that moment pass. There's lots of other moments I can build with them. Yeah. Brilliant. So for the parent that is thinking, right, I don't actually feel overly connected to my child right now. It's all just rushing around. We've got to be here and don't do that. and how can I build that connection? What are three tips, like three quite tangible tips that you might have for a parent that is thinking, yeah, I want to work on that relationship, that foundational relationship.

I want to be that to be more of a focus for me. What can I do? I think my first tip would be connect with yourself because if you are in that place where you're rushing around, everything's a struggle, you know, everything feels like you're battling with your child or against your child. I want you to just stop and think about you because often that means you've got some unmet

needs. There's something going on for you in that moment, in this struggle that needs to be tended to first because I truly believe that when we give ourselves goodness as parents, whether it's time, rest, a break from our children, you know, some space, then we're able to show up with our kids in a much better way and often in the way that we want to. So my first tip would be focus on you first, what's going on for you. Secondly, if you want to connect with your child, if you started to do the work on you, you're going to find this so much easier.

You probably don't even need these two tips, but I'll still give them to you. So for me, one of the things that helps me connect with my child in a moment of struggle where I'm noticing like a fight, you know, a battle, it's often either shower, bath time or getting out of the house. I try and focus on my child's littleness. That's something that helps me. So I look at her little hands. I sometimes will look at her eyes,

like try and catch her gaze. Or like, you know, because when we collect through our eyes, it's really hard to be dysregulated. So it's hard to be in a state where you're all over the place if you're able to get eye contact. Unless your child is, you know, finds eye contact distressing,

then I would say don't force it, but maybe join gaze, which is what I talk about my book, which is about like look at a similar thing, look at the same thing together. And so you're connecting through eyesight, but in a different way. But yeah, little hands, kind of noticing their littleness, because then that often helps me realize that my child isn't doing something to wind me up. Like it's not personal. It depersonalizes it for me. It helps me see them as a child. like in their littleness. And that often helps me soften. And finally, connection for me, if you're laughing or doing something fun, it's really hard to be angry or to have a battle. So some parents aren't silly, some parents are, but whatever brings you a little bit of joy or

brings you a little bit of laughter, can you introduce it with your child? And this can be really small. It can be a joke, like a knock knock joke. My daughter is really into knock knock jokes and she's awful at them, but that makes it really funny. Or is it something like put some music on and dance with your child for a bit, you know, or put on a song that you enjoy singing and get your child to join in? I don't know what it is because it's unique to you, but something that brings you joy that you can bring your child alongside it can be really connecting and can just disrupt that battle. And what I'm going to say is these things don't necessarily, take away the hardship or the struggle of parenting, but it can bring things into perspective.

It can bring a bit of balance in your day. So it's not all, it's been an awful day and a disaster. It can be, today's been a really tough day. It's been so hard. And we had that little like 10 minute dance and giggle. And that was really nice. And sometimes we need that. We all need that. Yeah. Those are amazing. And they all involved like a little bit of slowing down, don't they, kind of asking yourself what it is that you need, taking a moment just to look at your child and realize their smallness and I'm always one for the eyelashes. That's what I tend to look at. That's lovely. And then the laughter. You know, we have to pause, don't we sometimes just to allow ourselves to think of what's fun? Because we'll just get pulled along and I think

I'm just thinking of a couple of things that have really helped me connect with my kids better recently. And one of them is just remembering that the world is not going to pause. It's not going to slow down. It's me that has to pause. Whatever I'm doing, sometimes I have to ask myself, what is most important to me right now as I'm cleaning the kitchen and they're all lined up on the sofa, like snuggled in their onesies? Really, it's more important to me that I go and sit with them for a minute. And the other thing I've done really kind of switched up is when I sit with them, not scrolling on my phone, but reading my Kindle instead, because I don't want to watch whatever they're watching. But if I read my book, I feel way more interruptible and less

in a hole and easier to connect with. So it's like I'm more available. So those are a couple of things that I think I've done recently that are just little tweaks that have made a difference. But there's so much more in your book about, and it is often, isn't it, just about how are we parenting ourselves. How are we? Because often that is what comes out in these moments. And if we can care for ourselves and know where we're at and start using a lot of these parenting strategies on our own emotional. Yes, absolutely. You know, this is, it's huge. And yeah, I'm just grateful for your work and excited to see your book out there. But thank you so much for joining us. I would love to ask you what is something that you enjoy? What makes you

happy away from parenting. You said yoga and running and adventure sports. So those are off the table. We know those. Something that makes me happy. I love nature. So I will take time for me to just walk in the woods or run in the woods or anything like that. I find nature really grounding and like even just like opening the windows, you know, like even if it's raining, it doesn't matter. Like there is something about nature that gives me that pause, that kind of moment of stillness. And also, there's something hopeful for me in nature, because it's always evolving and changing, you know, with the seasons. And so when I'm stuck in a rut, I often look at nature and think, it'll change, you know, it'll pass. Things will move on because nature reminds me of that. So that's one of the

things. I love that. Well, I'm actually about to go on a very rainy walk to speak to my therapist. That's lovely. That's a great way. It's right. It's such a grounding. therapy, isn't it, nature? And it just, yeah, helps us think of the bigger picture of life and the fact that things move on. So thank you for that. And thank you for joining me. Thank you for your wise and warm words. As always, it's been a real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you have enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe and review for me. Also, if you need any resources at all, I have lots of videos and courses and everything from health anxiety to driving anxiety and people

pleasing nail all on my website anamatha.com. And also don't forget my brand new book Raising a Happier Mother is out now for you to enjoy and benefit from. It's all about how to find balance, feel good and see your children flourish as a result. Speak to you soon.